It’s only a week until the How’s My Feedback? conference in Oxford. We now have a preliminary programme for the day with a great line-up of speakers, talks and topics. Specifically, watch out for the world premiere of a brand-new feedback technology — and of course the prototype, which we will share with you shortly.

If you haven’t signed up yet, please do so as soon as possible. There are only a few spaces left.

Tuesday, 28 June 2011
9.00 – 17.30
Saïd Business School, University of Oxford

About the conference:

There is hardly anything these days that is not being evaluated on the web. Books, dishwashers, lawyers, teachers, health services, ex-boyfriends, haircuts, prostitutes and websites are just some examples targeted by novel review, rating and ranking schemes. Used in an increasing number of areas, these schemes facilitate public assessment by soliciting and aggregating feedback and distributing it as comments, ranks, scales and stories. While some have greeted this development as an innovative way of fostering transparency, accountability and public engagement, others have criticized the forced exposure and alleged lack of accuracy and legitimacy, pointing to the potentially devastating consequences of negative evaluations.

Now research is under way to tackle these issues head-on and evaluate the various types of review, rating and ranking schemes in a collaborative design experiment. Under the title ‘How’s my feedback?’, a group of experts, including designers, managers, reviewers, policy-makers, consumer spokespeople, academics and users are currently exploring the idea of a website that allows users to publicly assess their experience with review and rating schemes – a feedback website for feedback websites.

The goal of the conference is to reflect on this process and the emerging prototype. How are we to judge the effectiveness of these schemes? What modes of governance are implicated in their operation? What strategies and methodologies are employed in their development, maintenance and use? How successful is this project as a design intervention? What is it to evaluate the evaluators – and will this business ever end?